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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27249184">welcome to my table, bring your hunger</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern'>skvadern</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cunnilingus, Dom/sub, F/M, Misuse of Beholding Avatar Powers (The Magnus Archives), Non-Consensual Mindreading, Non-Human Genitalia, Sex for Information, The Beholding Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), Trypophobia, Xenophilia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:02:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,788</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27249184</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Oscar Wilde is out of information, out of allies, and out of options. Gertrude Robinson is his last resort, and she knows it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gertrude Robinson/Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Femdom Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>welcome to my table, bring your hunger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/gifts">Zai42</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hope u like ur porn xeno and eldritch, zai42! also i have seen your fungus goblins and raise you - fungus elves.<br/>did yall know that since they're playing in pathfinder, the 'erasing the line' world officially doesn't have warlocks? interesting, that...<br/>title from the hunger and the wild by the amazing devil</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beijing in the autumn is almost the perfect temperature, warmer than England would be and only a little more humid. Wilde can quite happily go around in his shirt and waistcoat – less flamboyant than he’d prefer, but needs must. He hasn’t made any attempt to adopt local dress; there’s nothing he can do short of illusion magic to blend in properly, and Beijing is cosmopolitan enough that a European human won’t stand out too badly, especially not with the new influx of refugees from the west.</p><p>He hasn’t announced himself to local Meritocratic agents. As far as the majority of the world is concerned, Oscar Wilde fell with Damascus, and Wilde likes it that way. The city isn’t particularly fractious, unlike some others he’s passed through; even in the glaring absence of Quinglong, the infrastructure she presided over appears to be ticking away just fine. He might even be able to find allies here, if he could bring himself to trust that all is as well as it seems.</p><p>He can’t, though. So here he is.</p><p>The bar he’s arranged to meet his contact in is one of those catering for European travellers, décor designed to make tourists feel they’re getting the authentic experience, while still being familiar enough to put them at ease. It’s the kind of bar a man like Wilde would be expected to end up – though not the one he’d have spent his night in by choice.</p><p>Still, they serve decent whiskey – Irish, praise the gods – and the patrons all appear to be keeping to themselves, which suits Wilde perfectly. He takes another tiny sip of his drink, and continues to scan the half-empty bar.</p><p>The door opens quietly, and when Wilde sees the woman stepping through, he forces his muscles to relax, affecting a slight lounge. Best to look as casual as possible.</p><p>Ms Robinson is a European elf, which he’d known, and tall even for that, easily at a height with himself. Her face is tanned and surprisingly weathered, given her species, and her clothes are similarly unusual, plain and hard-wearing. She spots him with more ease than he’d like and heads over, her movements casual but confident.</p><p>Wilde sips his drink, smiles, and raises a lazy hand to signal a waiter.</p><p>Ms Robinson arrives at the booth just before the young man on table service comes over, sinking heavily into her seat. She gives Wilde a sharp little nod in greeting, before turning to the man and ordering a glass of baijiu in rapid-fire Mandarin. Only once the waiter has moved out of earshot does she turn back to him.</p><p>Her eyes are… peculiar. The vivid green irises are strange but unsurprising, given elven colouring. What does strike him is the sheer intensity of her gaze, the way it snaps between them like electricity and raises the fine hairs on the back of his neck. He could attribute it to the age and experience of the woman sitting opposite him, both prodigious – but.</p><p>Something is <em>wrong</em>. Whatever’s looking out at him from those eyes is… <em>wrong</em>.</p><p>“Oscar Wilde,” Ms Robinson says baldly, and only ease of long practice keeps Wilde from freezing up. He most definitely did <em>not</em> use that name when he was setting up this meeting, not at any point.</p><p>“If you like,” he replies instead, nudging his mouth into a winning smile. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”</p><p>“How considerate,” Ms Robinson comments – oh, she’s not going to be won. Still, that doesn’t mean he should be remiss with his manners. He does have a reputation to uphold; whatever the hell that reputation is anymore.</p><p>“I’ve been observing the recent extreme weather phenomena,” he begins, leaning in slightly. Enough to foster an air of intimacy, of secrets shared.</p><p>Ms Robinson raises an eyebrow. “Hardly the world’s most pressing concern, from what I’ve been hearing.” If she’s at all concerned about the events she’s been hearing of – beginning in the city she’d apparently spent much of her early life in, no less – it doesn’t show.</p><p>“Oh, I don’t know,” Wilde replies. “They do appear to be largely concentrated around coastal areas. I’d say that knowing why a major mode of trade and transportation is being crippled would be vital to the war effort.”</p><p>With a nod, Ms Robinson concedes the point, gesturing for him to continue.</p><p>“I’m fairly certain these phenomena have their origins in Asia, probably Japan, but that is a very large area indeed to search.” <em>And while we do, the world will continue to end.</em> “I was wondering if perhaps you could help me narrow it down?”</p><p>Ms Robinson gives him a look that would have made the worst of his boyhood teachers green with envy. “And how could I possibly know anything about this?”</p><p>Uncowed, Wilde looks right back. “I’ve heard of you, Ms Robinson, before all this...” He makes a sweeping gesture. “There was a point I considered employing your services, and I took the time to collect references, as it were, for your work. The people I’ve spoken to were under the impression that knowing things you couldn’t possibly know was very much your <em>thing</em>.”</p><p>However it sounds, this is not flattery. Wilde himself hadn’t fully believed that this one woman would be of any help, until he’d heard some of the stories surrounding her, and verified a few of them for good measure. If even half of it is true, Gertrude Robinson has more than earned her reputation.</p><p>What Ms Robinson is actually doing in Beijing, he’s not quite sure. The young half-elf who’d help set up their meeting, one Gerard Keay, had said she was working with a small archaeological team. The group was searching for the location of a lost temple outside Beijing, described by the author Pu Songling; a mysterious, hidden place apparently not dedicated to any known god, local or foreign.</p><p>Why an archaeologist is moonlighting as an information broker, Wilde can’t say. Then again, why would an elven wizard once established as the rising star of her era have dropped almost completely off the map, over three centuries ago?</p><p>Ms Robinson regards him steadily, her face utterly clear. Try as he might, Wilde can’t get any sort of read on her; not a situation he’s used to, or one he’s comfortable with.</p><p>“You’re right,” she says at last, “this all began in Japan. With a little digging, I could probably give you a location, even.” She smiles, a humourless, sharp thing. “Of course, I’ll be expecting some compensation for my time.”</p><p>And there it is.</p><p>Wilde still has some small funds, and could acquire more if pressed – if he’s willing to grovel to Curie and her organisation, which he really isn’t above doing if he has to – but he’s very aware that those channels may close with no warning, leaving him truly stranded. His once-lush web of connections is barely extant; he’s got Zolf, Barnes, and very tentatively Carter, but there’s no one else he’d trust as far as he could throw them. He’s got no Meritocratic authority to back him up, no bolthole to run to as a last resort, barely any hope that the half-baked plan he does have will yield fruit. He doesn’t even have his fucking magic.</p><p>He <em>needs</em> this to work. He needs <em>her</em>, this strange sharp elf with her unnerving eyes, and he needs the information she could give him. The thought of leaving here without it – sitting the three people who’d followed him to the other side of the world down and admitting that he has no plan, no idea what to do except hide somewhere far away and wait for the world to finish dying – chills him to his bones.</p><p>What he does still have are his mind, sharp as it ever was, and his body, which may have seen better days, but is still nothing to scoff at. He’s going to have to work with that, and pray to the gods that he’s reading the cool, assessing look Ms Robinson is giving him over the rim of her glass correctly.</p><p>He leans forward further, painting on his most seductive smile. “Oh, I have every intention of making this worth your while.”</p><p>Gertrude Robinson’s eyes meet his squarely across the table, brilliant as acid and just as burning, and Wilde is suddenly, coldly certain that he’s made a mistake. That even coming here was a mistake. All the little hairs on his body rise and tremble with the cold, animal knowledge that he is <em>seen</em>, that something is <em>watching</em>, merciless and intent.</p><p>Then it’s over, like a door snapping shut, and the only thing watching is Ms Robinson. Which does beg the question of what else exactly was watching before.</p><p>“You know,” she says pensively, “that wouldn’t be the worst deal I’ve ever made. Besides,” she studies him again, and this time there’s only just a flicker of <em>wrong</em>, “you’re an interesting man, Mr Wilde. Plenty of hidden depths.” Her gaze flickers downwards, just for a moment, and her voice is so dry when she says “I look forward to plumbing them,” that even Oscar Wilde himself almost misses the double entendre.</p><p>He flashes his best society smile, and conceals his unease as skilfully as he can manage. Somehow, he’s certain Ms Robinson – Gertrude, he supposes, if they’re going to be intimate – sees right through him.</p><p> </p><p>~~~~~</p><p> </p><p>The lodgings Gertrude leads him to are tucked away in a slightly more dilapidated district, its streets far quieter than Wilde feels they should be. The whole journey, he cannot shake the prickling sensation of eyes on his back, but every time he glances around him the pavements are still, the windows dark. Keeping his pace steady becomes slowly more difficult.  </p><p>Gertrude stops at a door set into the wall besides a suspicious-looking shop, exchanging nods with the man leaning by the entrance. Wilde gets a once over, to which he replies with his most charming smile, and the man grins back, turning to say something to Gertrude in Mandarin too fast for Wilde to catch. Gertrude smiles back, a stiletto bladed thing, and gestures for Wilde to follow her upstairs.</p><p>The rickety wooden door at the top of the unlit stairwell groans open when Gertrude unlocks it, almost comically ominous. Wilde follows her through it quickly. As soon as she’s inside, Gertrude shrugs off her jacket, draping it over a hook set into the wall, and wanders over to the window. He gets the oddest sense that she’s trying to give him a moment to himself.</p><p>Determined to take advantage, Wilde casts his gaze around, unashamedly fascinated. The bareness of Gertrude’s living quarters tells him as much as a cluttered, fully-furnished room would – this is not a person, he thinks, with any real concept of <em>home</em>. The small chest locker sitting against the local-style bed is about the only trace of her presence he can spot, apart from a small stack of books left on the crate that appears to serve as a nightstand.</p><p>Movement from by the window, and Wilde has to concentrate on not turning too fast to face Gertrude. As she steps forward, a shaft of streetlight catches her face, casting it in sharp chiaroscuro and illuminating her eyes. They shine unsettlingly, brilliant in the gloom – brighter than they should be, and Wilde feels that squirming, crackling tension creep over him again, the knowledge that he’s being <em>watched</em>.</p><p>It should be familiar. Wilde has always been a consummate performer, prides himself on it, <em>enjoys</em> it. He can’t remember the last time he felt genuinely self-conscious. The last time he wanted to not be looked at.</p><p>Isn’t even sure he wants that now.</p><p>She steps behind him, deliberate enough that Wilde could move away if he wanted to. He wants to, a little. He doesn’t.</p><p>A sharp thud to the back of his knee and Wilde’s leg buckles. He tries instinctively to steady himself, but Gertrude shoves him further off balance, and Wilde’s brain clicks into gear. He lets himself go with it, dropping heavily and painfully to his knees on the scratched floorboards.</p><p>Gertrude circles round him, footsteps slow and loud. A tactic Wilde recognises, and respects. “I think I like you better down there,” she says calmly, when she’s come to stand in front of him. Wilde keeps his eyes down, fixed on her boots. They’re practical, well-made, not clean but obviously well cared for.</p><p>A cool, hard hand under his chin, and Wilde allows her to tilt his face up. When he sees what’s standing in front of him, he flinches, just a little.</p><p>Gertrude’s face is cast in shadow, but her eyes… her eyes are <em>not</em>. They burn out of her face – have they gotten bigger? Surely that’s impossible – the whites astonishingly vivid against the devouring black of her pupils where they eat away at her iris.</p><p>“Is this what you had in mind, then?” Gertrude asks, voice dangerously calm.</p><p>Wilde shrugs carefully. “I didn’t really have anything in mind,” he says, deciding that honesty will probably serve him better than pretty lies. He’s getting the impression that Gertrude Robinson has a much more acute reading of him than he of her. “Only what you want.”</p><p>Gertrude hums, low in her throat. “Used to giving people what they want, are you, Mr Wilde?”</p><p>He tilts his head, wishing he could pull his gaze away from hers. He thinks of magnets, of petrification, of the sucking draw of a vacuum. “I’m very good at it.”</p><p>“I can respect that,” Gertrude nods. “Never really been my tactic, but I can see how effective it’s been for you.” And she can, of that he has no doubt; Wilde has never felt quite so <em>seen</em>. Past all pretence and artifice, only the truth of him. Her eyes are metal pins straight though his sternum, and Wilde would swear he’s bleeding, but he can’t turn his face away to look down. He thinks, in that moment, he understand <em>morbid fasciation</em> better than anyone living.</p><p>There’s the strangest noise, rising like a cellar slowly flooding, seeping icy cold into his ears. A chorus of whispering voices, just out of earshot, so crowded and faint that Wilde can’t make out a single word. They set his head swimming and his teeth clenching and the ever-curious, ever-searching beast at the heart of Oscar Wilde <em>aching</em>, hollow and starved and <em>needy</em>.</p><p>It builds and builds until he can’t take it any more, desperate for something he can’t even name. “Please,” he whispers, voice cracking down the middle.</p><p>Gertrude holds his gaze like she would his throat. “You can beg better than that,” she tells him, sounding almost bored, and for a moment Wilde despairs. He <em>needs</em> this to work, and he can’t work with bored.</p><p>But no, the way she’s watching him makes a lie of that tone. It’s too intent, too <em>hungry</em>. Drinking in every muscle twitch, every movement. Studying him, dissecting him.</p><p>So Wilde arches his back a little, tilts his head back even further to bare the line of his neck. Lets his eye go wide and pleading, keeping himself from blinking until tears start to well. It’s easier than it should be to resist the desperate flutter of his eyelids; they ache to be open, staring, to drink her in as she’s drinking from him.</p><p>“Please,” he sighs out, “do whatever you want to me, just do <em>something</em>.” He lets the last word fall guttural from his lips, authentically desperate, and he can see the moment it hits in the jerky twitch of one finger, the awful dragging stretch of her pupils.</p><p>She takes one step backwards, then another. One hand raises lazily, and she crooks a long, thin finger. Her nails are short, he notices, almost down to the quick.</p><p>Wilde doesn’t try to get up. He falls forward onto his hands and crawls, the knees of his trousers catching on the rough wood. He doesn’t make too much of a show of it, calculating the swing of his hips just right, just enough to be enticing without putting her off.</p><p>Gertrude sinks heavily into a Western-style armchair that had been left haphazardly in the centre of the plain room. In its youth, it was probably a fine specimen of a thing, plush and wing-backed, covered with the faded remains of brocade. She stretches an arm out lazily and winds it into Wilde’s hair, finally grown long enough for her to get a good handhold, and guides where she wants him, kneeling between her spread legs. Her expression is bland, amused, just a hint of anticipation; her eyes are iron hooks sunk into his shoulders. Suddenly desperate to distract her, Wilde reaches for her waistband.</p><p>“Ah-ah,” she reprimands, and the quiet tone stops him cold. Instead, he watches as she unlaces her trousers with business-like motions, shoving them and her underwear unceremoniously down to her shins. She swings her legs up and settles them on his shoulders, boots thunking heavily against his back, and pulls him in by his hair. There’s strength there, far more than her build and race would suggest, and Wilde is now entirely certain this isn’t just tricks of the light and his own nerves. Gertrude Robinson is <em>wrong</em>. Gertrude Robinson is something he does not entirely understand, and is most definitely a threat.</p><p>Still, Wilde’s come this far in spite of every muscle fibre and twist of gut screaming at him to run. He’s not going to back down now.</p><p>The surprisingly tender skin of Gertrude’s thighs is a little warmer than the rest of her, but still inhumanly cool. Wilde’s never been with an elf before, but he has done his research – he knows to expect the smooth, featureless skin between her legs. He leans forward, taking a deep breath, and under the scent of cloth and skin he catches a trace of something wet and earthy.</p><p>He moves closer, caged in by her legs, and presses a gentle kiss to her crotch. Under his lips, he can feel the slightest ridges, and he traces one of them with the tip of his tongue. There’s the faintest taste, rich and almost savoury,</p><p>Gentle, slithering movements under his tongue, and Wilde pulls back a little to watch the flesh part, tendrils unwinding themselves slowly and curling away, revealing the wet, flushed organ beneath. It’s a deep red, lacy with pits, intricate and beautiful in its strangeness. As he watches, some of them fill with slender, pale pink tendrils, questing upwards.</p><p>Despite himself, Wilde can’t bite back a small, delighted smile. Always more things under the sun.</p><p>That damp-stone-passage scent is stronger now, heady, and Wilde dips his head, mouthing over the spongy-soft flesh. It’s cool under his lips, the strangest texture – slick as a human cunt and yet more delicate, more yielding, as if it’s stretched over something not entirely solid. Oddly satisfying, especially when Gertrude’s exhale comes out a little more forceful, and her fingers tighten slightly in his hair.</p><p>Experimentally, he leans forward and takes one of the little filaments into his mouth. It immediately pushes in, slick and delightfully solid, and another follows it, and another. Soon his mouth is full, and Wilde curls his tongue amongst the moving mass, suckling gently.</p><p>Above him, Gertrude sighs, rolling her hips gently. “Clever tongue,” she murmurs, and Wilde resists the urge to preen.</p><p>He slips a hand between her legs and brushes his thumb ever so lightly along the underside of one of the larger shield tendrils, and it twists into the touch, wet and surprisingly soft. Gently, he repeats the motion, bringing his other hand up so he can rub against the other side as well, and soon his hands are full and all-over slick, busy petting and caressing.</p><p>The curling little tendrils retreat after a few minutes of gentle suckling, and now his mouth is free, Wilde lets his tongue slip out and dip into the well below him. The flavour of the slick welling up from the many little holes he combs his tongue over bleeds slowly over his tongue, thick and heavy and vegetal.</p><p>Gertrude’s hips nudge up, and Wilde follows the movement, dipping the tip of his tongue into each tiny hole as he goes. They quiver slightly under the onslaught and he redoubles his efforts, trying to coordinate the movements of his tongue with his fingers, delighting in Gertrude’s soft, resonating moan. Her thighs are clenching tighter around his head, slick leaking more heavily until it’s practically streaming into his mouth, and the hands in his hair tighten rhythmically.</p><p>When he sucks at the flesh, hard and dragging, she practically pulls out his hair. Wilde feels his lips stretch into a smile, before he does it again, and again.</p><p>Gertrude is quiet when she comes, just an almost brutal jerking of her hips against his face. He rides her out with the ease of long practice, mouth sticky with earthy-sweet fluid, allowing himself the satisfaction of a pleasant job well done.</p><p>“Good boy,” Gertrude tells him, the hand not tight in his hair slipping down to wipe some of the fluid from around his mouth. When she offers him the fingers, he draws them into his mouth obediently, unable to taste the offering over the thick layer still coating his tongue.</p><p>When her breathing has evened out after a few quiet minutes, Gertrude eases his head out from between her legs, swinging them down and arching her hips to pull her clothes back into place. As her trousers come up, Wilde catches a glimpse of the tendrils covering her genitals knitting back together, hiding that secret part of her again. Deep in the rosy haze of arousal, he feels himself a little privileged, to have been trusted with something so private and delicate. Despite the circumstances.</p><p>He risks a glance up at Gertrude, and finds that she looks relaxed. Sated, even peaceful. For a moment, Wilde allows himself to think he might be done here, that he’s managed to sidestep whatever danger he’d sensed in this woman.</p><p>And then her eyes flicker open again – there’s something <em>off </em>about that movement, as if something that isn’t her own muscles has lifted her eyelids, and he can see that strange, alien hunger rising once more.</p><p>With a considering look, she slips a foot between Wilde’s slightly spread thighs. Her boot nudges upwards, pinning his cock against his belly, the perfect pressure. Wilde doesn’t try to rock his hips into it, however tempting.</p><p>“Oscar Wilde,” Gertrude says softly, and there’s a heaviness to her words, the strangest resonance, and he could swear her eyes are larger, sockets gaping. “You said I could have what I wanted from you. Did you mean it?”</p><p>A chill runs through Wilde’s core, sick and swooping, and he forces his breath deeper, makes himself calm. However scared he is, however much that gaze sets his skin crawling, he cannot, <em>cannot</em> lose sight of the mission. And really, had he ever believed he could buy the key to save the world with a quick fuck? Of course the price will be dearer. Of course, he will pay it.</p><p>Gertrude’s smile is a peculiar thing, bitter and twisting in on itself. More of a baring of teeth. “Thank you,” she says, and he’s struck by how oddly formal she sounds.</p><p>Then she looks at him. And then something <em>else</em> looks at him, that alien colossus he’d brushed against, and he’d been such a fool to think that it had done anything but glance at him before this.</p><p>“Statement of Oscar Wilde,” she says. Something says. It has Gertrude Robinson’s voice. It may not actually be Gertrude Robinson. “Regarding… regarding the nightmares he was cursed with, causing him to sever himself from his magic.”</p><p>Wilde wrenches himself – tries, tries to wrench himself away,  but there’s a boot grinding down on one calf and a hand in his hair and those <em>eyes</em> that will not let him go. Instinctively, stupidly, he starts to sing but the words gutter and die in his mouth when the magic fails to rise.</p><p>“Statement begins,” Gertrude intones, and Wilde’s mouth opens again. This time, the words that come out are no song.</p><p>They fall from him like blood trickling from his lips – the first night he had laid his head down and come awake what felt like hours later, but was only seconds. The freezing sweat, the sickening disorientation, the bone-deep <em>horror</em> of what he’d just seen.</p><p>He describes that too, for her, and it’s like he’s back in one of those dreams all over again, the disgusting, vicious tableaus so vivid, so <em>loud</em>. The worst nightmares he’s ever had, without question, nothing he could possibly sleep through.</p><p>He tells her about the endless, dragging days, having so much responsibility and so much creeping paranoia and the constant, aching exhaustion making his work all but impossible. Of knowing he was failing, and physically not being able to do any better, feeling everything slip slow as a glacier out of his hands and tumble away.</p><p>As he – not talks, he is not talking, Oscar Wilde knows full well when he is and isn’t in control of his words and he has never been <em>less</em> in control – the pressure of Gertrude’s eyes upon him grows, and grows, until they’re burning holes in his flesh. Or, no, carving pieces out. Devouring. Eating through his every moment, picking apart every thought he has ever entertained and dissecting it, judging it. He is falling, unstoppable and uncontrollable, into the cavernous, starving maw, an eye that stretches across a horizon and still wants more. He is a misbehaving child, frozen in guilty fear. He is the man who has just seduced someone for his own ends for the first time, staring down at the peacefully sleeping body whose trust he’s about to betray. He is the half-broken body curled on a bare Artemisian cot, wrestling with the enormity of his mistakes, of the danger all of them are in. He is every indiscretion and every failure and every petty, horrid thing he’s ever done, all of it flayed from the warm and hidden places inside his skin and spread out under a bright, cold light.</p><p>It is <em>mortifying</em>.</p><p>From far away, pinned under that unrelenting gaze, Oscar realises he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life.</p><p>The crackling hissing in his ears grows louder and louder, and behind it, if Oscar strains to the very limits of his perception, he can hear… a choir. A billion voices raised in endless, echoing song, every word incomprehensible, and yet if he just listened <em>harder</em>-</p><p>The song slips into his brain, insidious as music always is, winding its alien words into and around him until he’s swaying, heart stuttering as it tries to beat in time. There is knowledge in that song, he knows it, terrible things that can never be known.</p><p>“Please,” he whispers, the word falling like a stone to the floor. When he finally stopped giving his <em>statement</em> he does not know, but his lips are his again. “Please.”</p><p>The monster watching him, his every cell, his entire life, makes no answer – not that Oscar knows if he’s pleading for this torture to stop, or to never, ever end. It simply stares back at him, and stares and stares and stares-</p><p>Split open, skin stretched open and skull cracked wide, Oscar comes apart. For a shuddering moment he is <em>full</em>, icy water briming over, things he could not possibly know without shattering like a porcelain doll teaming between his ears. Then it pours away, spilling out through the cracks and leaving him bereft.</p><p>He’s crying, he realises distantly. He can’t seem to stop.</p><p>A cool hand cupping his cheek, thumb swiping almost gently over his cheek. Despite himself, Oscar leans into it, tips his heavy head on a spine that suddenly feels like crumbling stonework and lets whatever Gertrude Robinson is take his weight.</p><p>He manages to find his way back to his voice – trembling, a shadow of itself. “Was that everything you wanted, then?”</p><p>Gertrude’s laugh is a scant huff of breath. “It was sufficient.” Slim, strong hands draw him down to rest on the rough cloth on her trousers, and fingers that, now he’s this close, smell faintly of gunpowder, slide into his hair again. She pets him absent-mindedly, almost entirely without affection.</p><p>As she settles back in the armchair with a gentle creak, both of them catching their breath, Wilde realises he can’t feel her eyes on him anymore. It’s a holy, blessed relief.</p>
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